


Crater

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: The Mountains Are The Same [9]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: (because Warboys), Gen, Max Brings Furiosa Gifts, Max Makes A Friend, Podfic Welcome, Suicidal Ideation, Surprisingly low on the Feels Richter Scale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 08:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4557831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crater: Hitting the ground at the end of a fall instead of being caught by the rope</p><p> <i>When he’d met the wastelander, Austeyr had been pushing the bike along, trying to get it to the Citadel; Furiosa and the rest of the crew should be done with the milk run by now, back from the Bullet Farm. Perhaps by getting the motorcycle back to them, he’d be re-accepted as crew despite his failure. But if this wasteland wanker is taking the bike from him all that will be lost.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Crater

Glory skips across the orange dusted road, always at the far edges of where the mirages start appearing.

 _Children always liked water_ , Max thinks. _Why not ghost children and ghost water?_

The sun’s swinging downwards when they get to a point in the road where Glory squats and peers at tire tracks and her head swings ‘round to her left.

She goes off-road.

The sun is just touching the horizon when he starts coming up on wreckage, bits and pieces of red sheared metal, jagged edges, and curved bits streaked in citadel black.  

 _Max! Where are you?_ Glory yells impatiently.

He rises from his crouch examining the metal, too small to be of much use but he automatically collects it in his pockets. She’s at the curve of the next bend, waving, the land around them rising and falling in gentle hills. Max approaches, gun out and ready to dive to the side, and the _shush shush_ of feet dragging through sand finally registers in his consciousness.

A lone white figure appears around the bend, head down, rolling beside him a motorcycle, his arm draped along its handles. The other arm hangs limply, looking squared off and dislocated, and the bike wobbles precariously. Max watches as it becomes one wobble too many and the vehicle just flops over, as if done with life.

The War Boy sags and tilts his head up to look at the sky above him.

He’s already moving towards him but still three car lengths away when the black painted brow tilts, catching sight of him. With a roar the man dashes between Max and the bike, arms to the side, as if to protect it.

Max only approaches grimly, shoulders set, and watches as the taller man’s eyes grow quick and panicked. He rushes Max, who sidesteps at the last moment and shoves the War Boy flat to the ground using his own momentum, with pressure on his bad shoulder. Max sits on him calmly, palm to the joint, as the thrashing kicks up sand in sad little plumes.

“How do you know Furiosa?” Max asks the brand on the back of the War Boy’s neck. The way the Citadel cheered when they saw her on their return, the way that the Citadel had echoed when Immortan Joe had first sent off the convoy, loud enough for him to hear inside, Max knows that anyone who was of the Citadel would know who Furiosa is. But _how_ they know her, that’s something different.

_Was this War Boy reliable?_

The body beneath him stills.

“How do _you_ know—”

Max puts a little pressure on his shoulder.

“Aagh, _schlanger!_ Tellin’ you nothing!”

Max pauses. He’s not sure what he’s going to do with this guy even if he’d prove to be as open to reason as Nux. He only knows that this War Boy is currently split from any war party and doesn’t seem to have a working bike. As for himself, Max has the vague idea of their location and an idea of what he’d like to do, but what he knows for sure is that he would really like his car back. Another pair of hands might help, especially if between them they could get the motorcycle working. Maybe Max would take him the rest of the way backtracking up to the canyon, searching for salvage, get them both working rides.

Well, if the War Boy stops wanting to injure him, he thinks, as he wrestles the body still again.

‘ _Do you want that thing off your face?’_ Max remembers.

Speaking slow, testing the words out in his mouth, Max asks the young man, ”Want me... t’reset your arm?”

The white-painted head twists to one side, to eye him dubiously, “You’d have to let me up for that.”

“Yeah,” Max agrees.

“...you’re just gonna shove me down again if I run, aren’t you?”

“Mm.”

The War Boy drops his head down against the sand for a moment.

Then nods.

Max gets off him, and prodding him to sit upright, moving to the lancer’s left side where the arm sits awkward. The younger man looks at him stiffly and moves slow, and freezes when Max grabs ahold of the wrist in one hand and the elbow in another, bending the arm at a right angle.

“Relax,” Max says.

“This gonna hurt isn’t it.”

“Nng,” He shakes his head and starts massaging the muscles of the shoulder, ”not if you relax.”

The War Boy scoffs, “Think this is my first? It always hurts, that’s how you can tell they’re doing it right.”

“ ‘They’?” Max prods, moving the massage down to the bicep.

“The Organic Mechanic, where us War Boys go to get ourselves tuned. Well,” a begrudging sigh, shoulders lowering, “Boss never much liked us to be there.”

“Oh?”

A shrug, “Never much liked it herself, to be honest. Never got the full story but, the Mechanic gets—”  

Max drops his hands and sits back on his heels.

“—weird. Around her— hey, you gave up already?” The War Boy tilts his head, mouth an angry twist.

“ ‘S fixed. Try it.”

Max gets a long look that grows astonished as the man tests out his arm and its range of motion.

It's hard to tell age with the facepaint, but he's tall and lean, well-muscled, in his mid twenties at least. He's got the same symbols on his right arm as the lancer on Nux's car did - must be a lancer too. Max guesses that the tumors on the War Boy’s side and shoulder doesn’t help with the flexibility; there’s still tightness at the corners of the other’s eyes when the arm reaches a couple angles, and a certain unbalanced quality to the movement, but the arm rotates freely.

“Oh.”

“Mmm.” Max stands and goes to look at the fallen bike. The War Boy scrambles up and tries to follow. “Worked with Furiosa then?” Max guesses that she’d been the only female Imperator in Immortan Joe’s ranks, but figures the War Boy would reveal the truth in his responses. Seems like a chatty guy.

“What—” he comes to a stop on the other side of the bike.

“You called her ‘Boss’ just now.” Max squats and starts brushing sand away from the pipes and connections, brow furrowing, checking the fuel line.

“Well,” the War Boy shifts his weight from one foot to another, and finally sighs as if coming to a decision, “I’m on her crew. Or.. don’t know if I still am. Hey are you— are you a blackthumb?”

He just grunts and continues working at the bike, checking the spark plugs, the chains— _oh_. Max starts patting himself down for something thin and sharp. A needle comes to his hand, used. Bloody.

 _Furiosa_ ’s.

He runs a slow thumb up its side thoughtfully. Changes his grip on it and starts picking the sand out of the chains.

 _Her crew would need a bike to get home_ , he thinks. He doesn’t know when he’d decided that, and he doesn’t know if this War Boy was acceptable. Why doesn’t he consider himself part of her crew anymore? Was it because Furiosa betrayed Immortan Joe or simply because he’d gotten separated?

“What are you doing?”

Max shoots a look of disbelief over his shoulder and continues at his task. Pauses, darts out a hand to run his finger through the dark grease across the lancer’s forehead—

“Hey!”

—and applies the oil to the bit he’d just cleaned. He continues working. Max wonders what he might say to get this young man to show who or what he’s loyal to; he wishes he had someone else here to do it for him.

He wonders what Furiosa would say, given the chance.

“...you can’t just _take_ the bike,” the young man protests, and Max scoffs. There’s no ‘taking’ here, he’d be returning them both to the Citadel; though he might be returning her crew to her hogtied if he proves to be—

 _Max!_ Glory shouts.

He barely has time to wedge the needle into the chain and let go before he’s tackled.

 

* * *

  

Austeyr’s face meets the dirt again. Should’ve known the tackle wouldn’t work, he’s taller but quite a bit lankier. He’s outweighed and outmatched but he has to _try_.

“I need to get this back to her!” He doesn’t understand why this wastelander resets his arm, can’t even wrap his head around why he did it so gently, but he knows that somehow this man is interested in the motorcycle. He knows that the man knows Furiosa and what cause has he to know of Austeyr’s Imperator unless it was through War?

Letting him use his arm again isn’t worth letting the man steal the bike from Boss’ convoy; the vehicle’s so valuable that the comparison isn’t even _close_. And that’s not even counting the sick feeling of betrayal Austeyr gets at such a bargain being conducted right beneath his nose.

 _He didn’t agree to anything!_ He wouldn’t have knowingly failed Boss like that.

Austeyr still burns with shame that he couldn’t get even one lance off against the spikey cars; his bike had been rammed by the enemy’s front bumper, but Austeyr had already gone flying. He’d landed on the heaps of sand that borders the road but Spool wasn’t so lucky. His driver had landed on the road and been run over by one of the trailing Buzzard vehicles, large and boxy. Austeyr paid Witness and hoped for Spool that it was enough to make him awaited.

He’d fetched their bike but he was no repair boy, never had the knack. He’s lucky to have had some muscle, blessed by the Immortan with good aim; even if both are failing him. The nightfevers are coming on him sharp now, arms gone shaky, core muscles weak ever since his tumors started ramming up through them, and Austeyr had hoped that this run he’d be given the chance to enter Valhalla.

Instead he’d been less than mediocre.

When he’d met the wastelander, Austeyr had been pushing the bike along, trying to get it to the Citadel; Furiosa and the rest of the crew should be done with the milk run by now, and perhaps by getting the motorcycle back to them, he’d be re-accepted as crew despite his failure. But if this wasteland wanker is taking the bike from him all that will be lost.

“Deceiver!” Austeyr spits, and struggles, uncaring of his shoulder or his sides or any of his pain. He almost knocks the man off. “Liar! _I didn’t barter this_. Pull my arm back out again, but leave the bike to me.”

“Why.”

“Why does it matter! You know her right? If you’re doing this as revenge—” the thought of it enrages him more and he finds the will to increase his struggles.

His face is smashed into the ground again and the growl echoes in his ear, “And if I was doing this on Immortan Joe’s orders?”

Austeyr drops back down, “What?”

“Did you know she ‘traitored’ him?” The wastelander is tying him up with a stretch of cloth, as Austeyr’s trying to wrap his mind around it.

 _Furiosa_ ? _She traitored Immortan Joe? Is she even still alive?_

“Holed up in the citadel now,” the man replies, Austeyr didn’t realize that he’d asked that out-loud and he finds his jaw being tilted so that he meets the man’s eyes, “Somehow took it. The War Pups let her up.”

Austeyr can't meet the man’s gaze. He can well enough believe that the War Pups let her up because they’d always swarmed around her and the crew with curiosity; even if she was silent more often than not and just short of curt, unlike the other Imperators she had mingled among them even when ranked. She’d kept drifting down to the garages herself, doing repairs next to the pups on the vehicles she ran. Austeyr had watched her as a War Boy-in-training with the vague wish that he could’ve known an Imperator like that when he’d been young himself. She’d always seemed so assured of her place, steady like the Rig itself, an impression that only cemented when Austeyr was honored with his selection as part of her crew.

So Furiosa betraying their Redeemer? That seems impossible.

“You’re a liar.” Austeyr says weakly.

The man just grunts and goes back to repairing the bike. Austeyr struggles to sit up, the cloth binding his arms making every movement tug at his bad shoulder and spike with pain.

“You say the Immortan wants this bike? Well where is he then?” It seems incomprehensible that the Boss could be still alive if the Immortan found himself traitored. She was chrome and part machine but Joe was the Immortan himself, “What happened?”

All Austeyr is given is an absent wave in the direction of the canyons, Rough Rider territory. “Chased after her,” a pause as the man blows at the chains and then picks at them some more with a bloody needle, “Battle.” There’s a vague twitchy hand motion.

He watches the wasteland man for a long long time trying to wrap his mind around a world where someone could do such a thing to Immortan Joe and remain breathing.

 _If anyone could,_ Austeyr thinks, _it would be Furiosa._

The wastelander eventually seems satisfied with the chain and starts the vehicle up briefly, listens to the engines rumble. Then he shuts it off with a nod. It will be full dark soon.

The man rises and walks over to him, sifting through his pack.

Something is held in front of his face.

“Drink,” the man grunts.

“I could do this myself with two hands,” Austeyr points out.

He’s given a long look.

“I’ll make sure the bike returns to who it belongs to.” Austeyr offers to this man who claims to be working for the Immortan. “You’ve said your piece. We’re going to the canyons right? You want to meet up with the Immortan? I’ll help you.”

The wastelander is unmoving and the sound of the wind is loud around them. But the man finally bends down and unties his hands, taking the cloth back to drape around his neck.

“You’ll help me?” The sound is growled and a packet of something is nudged at his hands along with a canteen.

When Austeyr opens the packet he finds what feels like jerky and something… papery? He can barely tell, it’s dark, and the night isn’t great for vision or detail. He licks it and it’s like nothing he’s ever eaten, a bit spicy, a bit... bright.

“What’s this?” He works at the jerky first. It might be a trick.

A phrase is mumbled but that _can’t_ be right, Austeyr almost chokes on the jerky. ‘ _Dried greens’_? Who would think of giving a War Boy such a thing? (This man, apparently, who’d gently reset his arm.)

The wasteland man only gives an affirmative sound as if agreeing. Or encouraging.

Austeyr simply folds the ‘greens’ up and slips it into a hip-pouch; he’ll look at it come dawn. His mind is spinning, but he knows what he has to do.

 

* * *

 

The bike rumbles to a start and then it sets off.

Max comes out of his semi-alert doze. Avoiding true sleep is a cultivated skill and one that’s become habit more often than not. And Max sits up swiftly and tracks its movement.

The sound dies.

He gets up, does a quick check for all his gear, and lopes towards the bike. It was headed towards the Citadel, and he finds his mouth quirking.

The War Boy looks terrified when he arrives, but he still positions himself in front of the machine as if it's worth more than his own skin.

“Bad fuel,” Max says, “Contaminated. Can start but...” he waves at the stalled bike.

“You’re not taking this ride,” the War Boy insists, looking like he’d die to back it up. His eyes drifts down to the black scarf around Max’s neck and if possible, begin to look even more afraid.

Max makes a questioning sound and steps closer.

“You can’t!”

“ ’s what you wanted isn’t it?” Max prods, “Taken back to Immortan Joe?”

The white-painted chest heaves with his breaths, as if panicked, “But then how would I be awaited? The Immortan doesn’t accept— I’m just—”

“Mmm?” Max stops an arms-length away. The other’s scarified arms are drifting down in uncertain motions, twitchy.

Max knows the feeling, and waits the taller man out with his silence, and watches him fidget and then rest a hand on a small hip-pouch. But instead of opening it, the War Boy just pats it as if thinking and trying to draw guidance.

“To go to Valhalla you must be Witnessed,” he finally says.

Max nods, remembering how insistent Nux had been to throw himself into danger, how desperately the young man had been to prove himself and to be useful. He reaches out and supports the other man’s left elbow, on the shoulder that’d been dislocated, rubbing a little to encourage the arm to untense.

The War Boy’s shoulders collapse in on themselves like small hunched shame and his other hand comes up to support his left forearm.

“The Immortan,” and the words drag themselves out, “does not want to witness mediocrity.”

“And Furiosa would?” Max asks, a bit in surprise given his memory of the woman as he’d first seen her.

“The Boss… has mercy,” there’s a shift of his eyes as if he’d said something incriminating, “For those who are crew. Like some… Afterburn recently, he was too busted for another run, Mechanic wouldn’t give him another line, said it’d be wasted.”

The War Boy clears his throat, and Max waits patiently.

“Boss, she, she took him to where we’d dry-practice, all of us there that day. He’d given her a good scuffle and Boss made sure we witnessed him when she sent him off.”

Max looks at the War Boy, brows furrowed. ‘ _She sent him off’, did that mean..._?

“I’d like my ride to Vahalla to be as clean, as quick,” a hard swallow, “You can’t imagine how that garage sounded that day. It was so loud the gates _must_ have been opened to him; he’d even been sent there by the Boss’s own chrome hand.”

There’s a long moment where they’d each were lost in thought. _This is the shape of their mercy_.

Max lets himself register how Furiosa killed one of her own men, how the rest apparently found that compassionate, how Furiosa had been so certain she’d killed them all in her escape, or got them killed, because Max knows the shape of the ghosts that appears in her eyes. Had she felt sick about it at the time or had that come only with hindsight?

(“...redemption…”)

 _This world breaks each of us in our own way,_ Max thinks.

“I’d...I’d failed at lancing this past run but thought that maybe,” large eyes rose finally to meet his, shining, “Maybe getting her this bike would get me back on her crew. That’s why I need it, Immortan Joe has shinier rides, better War Boys, let me… let me just _get this to her_ —”

— _that I might die awaited_. The words hang between them in the silence.

Max hums, and feels inadequate, and gives the taller man an awkward pat to his good shoulder, “ ‘m sure you already are crew. That she’s seen you. Remembers you.” He gives the shoulder a gentle shake.

“But how do you _know_.” The sound is cracked.

“Met her.” Max shrugs, “Helped her.”

The man looks still disbelieving.

Max tugs a bit at the black scarf uncomfortably, “She gave me this.”

The War Boy’s shocked glance darts from the scarf to his eyes and back again, “The Imperator—?! She gave… and not the Immortan?”

“Not ‘Immortan’,” Max growls, “ _Dead_. She killed him.”

A deep long breath heaves into scarified chest.

And another.

“Immortan Joe’s _dead?_ ” And finally the War Boy breaks through his shock, shoulders squaring, shaking off Max’s hand, “You said you were working for him!”

Max skims him a sideways look. He’d never said that directly, “Had t’be sure of you.” He steps back from the War Boy and gestures at the horizon. “Still going back?” _Does Joe’s death change things?_  
  
He’s greeted with a hysterical laugh. “More’n ever.”

The lancer trots up to the left handlebar and grabs it with his good hand. Max watches him and nods, and meets him on the other side. Releasing the kickstand, they start walking.

 _Should be a day’s walking to get back,_ Max thinks. _Maybe a bit more to give him rest_.

“Hey,” the War Boy breaks in, “What’s your name, by the way?”

Max looks over and the man’s lips are cracked in a scarred smile.

 _Those are so rare now,_ he thinks.

Finds himself saying, “Max.”

“Mine’s Austeyr,” the War Boy replies, smiling wider, and that’s the excuse Max gives himself for being caught off-guard when the black forehead lunges over the bike to bash against his. “Nice to meet you.”

Max presses a hand to his head and it comes back greased. He blinks. Grunts and nods in front of them.

Austeyr laughs again and they push the bike along between them as dawn slides over the world’s lip.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [The Cunningham Technique:](http://journals.lww.com/em-news/Fulltext/2011/06000/Breaking_News__Believe_It_or_Not__Painless.1.aspx) A technique that reduces a dislocated shoulder in less than two minutes, using only massage, developed by Australian physician Dr. Neil Cunningham.
> 
> Bonehandledknife: I’m terribly amused how Belay (to protect a roped climber from falling) refers to both to how Max is for Furiosa as well as Furiosa is for Max, and Furiosa through Austeyr is reeling him back in again.
> 
> [hey look this is Austeyr before his last promotion to full-forehead grease](http://40.media.tumblr.com/174d6ba2c0d97d695c96ca3ca25e027e/tumblr_nsinkr8rNm1ub5pzfo1_1280.jpg)


End file.
